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Summers, Business Voice Support for China's WTO AccessionUS Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers and his nine predecessors joined business leaders Monday in supporting China's accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) and granting the world's most populous nation permanent normal trade relations (PNTR).Summers flew this morning to attend a breakfast gathering of 40 business leaders and six congressmen interested in trade with China. At a following press briefing, a letter in the name of nine former treasury secretaries to President Bill Clinton was circulated. The secretary warned that it would be a "grave mistake" not to facilitate China's accession to the WTO with PNTR. However, apparently to placate the labor unions lobbying against a landmark deal with China, he stressed that the workers' rights everywhere in the world should be protected. The United States and China signed the trade agreement last November, paving the way for China's entry into the Geneva-based WTO. It calls on China to open a wide range of markets, from agriculture to communications. In exchange, American congress should grant Beijing PNTR, a status that would guarantee Chinese goods the same low-tariff access to the U.S. markets as products from almost every other nation. But the PNTR faces stiff opposition from some democrats in the House and labor union leaders who have demanded China improve human rights and labor standards before joining the WTO. "I believe the PNTR is very much in our national interest, very much in the interest of American workers," said Summers with Maurice R. Greenberg, Chairman of American International Group(AIG) , Inc., and Lewis M. Eisenberg, chairman of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, standing with him before cameras, a show of consensus on backing China's integration into the global trade system. Summer's predecessors, including Robert Rubin, James A. Baker, Lloyd M. Bentsen, W. Michael Blumenthal, Nicholas F. Brady, Douglas Dillon, G. William Miller, George Shults and William Simon, voiced their backing for President Clinton's efforts to secure the passage of his bill on China's PNTR. "Since the normalization of relations with China and the establishment of the U.S.-China Joint Economic Committee two decades ago, each Administration has worked to encourage China's market reforms and integration into the world economy. Your Administration -- and this U.S. Congress -- have an historic opportunity to secure important commercial benefits for the American people while promoting greater openness, transparency, and reform in China's economy," they said. AIG Chairman Greensberg, concurrently chairman of the Asia Society and director of the National committee for U.S.-China Relations, warned that it would be a "tragedy" to think otherwise. The CEOs and congressmen had "very good discussions" about the issue and reached the point that it is important to integrate China into the world economy, said Greensberg, who hosted the breakfast gathering. He made his first visit to Beijing in 1975 and His AIG had its corporate origins in China when its founder C.V. Starr founded Asia Life Insurance Company in Shanghai in 1919. Chairman Eisenberg told reporters that he supports China's PNTR and urges congressional approval of that status because for centuries, foreign trade has been the lifeblood of the economies of New York and New Jersey, and China, with its 1.2 billion people, is a huge market. According to his account, last year U.S. exports to China totaled some 18 billion U.S. dollars. Of that, 1.3 billion dollar worth of goods was shipped from the New York and New Jersey region. "We need to build on this enormously important relationship," he said. Eisenberg said Governor Christine Todd Whitman of New Jersey and Governor George Pataki of New York also support normal trade relations with China. Whitman and Pataki were among the 44 governors who signed a letter on March 31 to Senate majority leader Trent Lott, urging him to support China's PNTR. They said that the U.S. exports to China in 1998 created 200,000 jobs for Americans and if the PNTR is granted the exports to that country could nearly double.
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